We can't afford this

"Affordable" doesn't mean quite what it once did:

Researchers at Indiana and Cornell universities say that how the federal government defines "affordable" could leave millions of dependents of low and moderate income workers without reasonably priced insurance under the federal health care overhaul.

[. . .]

The law defines insurance as affordable if the employee's cost is less than 9.5 percent of his or her family income. Employees who pay more will be steered into state insurance exchanges.

But the law is vague whether it refers to the cost of individual coverage or family coverage. Researchers say how that question is answered could either steer millions of people to subsidized care or leave dependents uninsured.

I know this is really getting into fuddy-duddy territory, but "affordable" once meant that an individual or family wanted to buy something, so sat down and went over things like income, expenses and fixed costs and considered the value vs. cost of the object or service being offered and decided whether it made sense to make the purchase. At the core of the concept is the idea of responsibility -- you only take on what you can handle.

Now, though, it means a definition by the federal government that could affect whether millions of people do or don't get access to billions of dollars in "subsidized care." There's absolutely no sense of responsibility involved -- it's an entitlement, you see. Other terms that don't mean what they once did:  "constitutional" and "limited government."